WHERE THE NAME COMES FROM

MOUNTEBANK

/ˈmaʊntɪbaŋk/ · noun · 1570s

A travelling showman who climbed onto a bench in a market square and held a crowd — with a story, a trick, some music — before selling them something. From the Italian montambanco, monta in banco: “mount on bench.”

MOUNTEBANK and MONTE BAUNK are the same ten letters. Nothing added, nothing left over.

I took the name for the bench, not the quackery. The work is drawn by hand, line by line, and it is meant to hold you the way that crowd got held — by looking like one thing and turning out to be another. The craft is real. The misdirection is the art.